First time purchasing a cell phone here. That's right, I'm moving into the modern world with the rest of everyone else for the first time...

Anyway, I have no idea what cell phones are like, so I'm wondering if it's possible to install BSD on any of them. Otherwise I'd like one where I can install ircII or something on it so that I can chat on IRC and stuff.

__________________
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words." -Philip K. Dick

Android and Palm webOS based phones, and the iPhone will likely be the most readily available ones to look at, at least in the US market; I'm not familiar with others. To my knowledge you can get a shell running on Android, so perhaps there is someway to get ircII.

I have a Samsung B2700. It's not a fancy smartphone with touchscreen and whatnot, it's just a reliable phone that works.
IMO the LED flashlight on this phone is more useful than all iPhone apps combined.

I have a Samsung B2700. It's not a fancy smartphone with touchscreen and whatnot, it's just a reliable phone that works.
IMO the LED flashlight on this phone is more useful than all iPhone apps combined.

haha, no, I just wanted a phone with good build quality that would last a while (at least 5 years, preferably 10). After all, who of us hasn't dropped their phone accidentally at least once? (I know I have).

__________________
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.

The possibility of getting one of the free BSD's on your phone is slim, but several phones exist running Linux..

Apple's Iphone runs a modified version of their own OS X, which is a derivative of BSD, but you must "jailbreak" it as officially Apple doesn't allow people to run their own software on the phone.

Nokia's n900 (..related to the n770/n800 mobile devices) runs Linux.. and it's fairly strait forward to get a root terminal directly on it.

OpenMoko has a product which has some preliminary support by OpenBSD, but it's not at a point where you can make telephone calls.. it's also more of a "developer" device so you're unlikely to find one that's reliable.

Google "Android" phones do technically run a Linux kernel, but the majority of the higher layers are written by Google in Java, and native code execution is tricky.. and like the Iphone you need to essentially "jailbreak it".

There are a few other options for someone wanting a small Unix-like environment on their phone, and you can surely find a few products by searching on a few search engines.. but ultimately it's going to be difficult, and they're not overly cheap.

The possibility of getting one of the free BSD's on your phone is slim, but several phones exist running Linux..

Given the nature of the OP's questions, I'm taking this comment one step further.

While a number of cell phone vendors may be able to make the claim that their devices run Linux, it is not stock off-the-shelf Linux (nor even a stock Linux kernel...) just as the hardware is not identical to off-the-shelf computers. In other words, the operating system used within cell phones is highly stripped & tweaked to the specific needs of the hardware found the device.

Yes, a *BSD can be installed (Danger is built on top of a NetBSD core...), but it will take an experienced embedded programmer significant time to do the customization (After all, it is custom hardware...), & the result will not be identical to what can be found on a commodity desktop.

The goal of using a known kernel such as Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc. as the basis of specialized embedded devices is to take advantage of a vetted code base to provide basic resource management -- memory management, multiple processes, interprocess communication, providing a working network stack in a minimal environment -- code that doesn't need to be reinvented. Expecting common userland roadmarks such as X (which is a resource pig...) may be too much in some instances. Constraining costs & physical space requirements are much more important in the embedded world than providing a lush GNOME-friendly interface.

To get a feel for the added constraints embedded developers must consider, read Dale Rahn's (one of OpenBSD's developers...) interview on tweaking OpenBSD for ARM processors:

Note that the article references Symbian as being a major player in the embedded market. Wind Rivers (who for a short time provided funding for the NetBSD Project...) is another who provided the base platform for NASA's Mars rovers.

Constraining costs & physical space requirements are much more important in the embedded world than providing a lush GNOME-friendly interface.

There are better devices for BSDs than phones, from that perspective. While it will likely never match NetBSD for portability, here are some cute photos of different OpenBSD platforms, from the project's web pages:

The Zaurus hasn't been made for a few years and are very difficult to come by, the Longsoon is too big to be really portable, but too small to be really useful, and the landisk and socppc are not mobile devices.

__________________
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.

I carry an Asus eeePC 1005HAB -- its fits in a small Taurus netbook travel case, the travel case fits in the glove compartment of my MINI Cooper. That's small enough for me. For now.

My phone is a Motorola V195, because my customer does not allow cameras on cell phones carried by visitors/consultants. Nor on their netbooks. I don't bring the netbook in to work, it has a built-in webcam.